Flicker clicks tick off a corgi

By Kevin J. Cook

Posted:
04/23/2014 06:21:24 PM MDT

Kevin Wildlife Window

Twelve woodpecker species currently live in Colorado; a 13th woodpecker has not been seen here since the early 1960s. Having found, watched and studied all but one of these birds, I must honestly say that until now I have never thought of any woodpecker as a baby sitter.

Or should I say "corgi sitter?"

Working in my office, I kept hearing a muffled, guttural "oof!" that invariably means something has captured the corgi's attention.

Understand that almost anything can capture the corgi's attention. Things that move and things that make noise always need some investigation, but things that both move and make noise, especially at the same time, usually require some sort of active intervention.

The thing about woodpeckers is that they move and they make noise. Usually, they do this up in trees. This time of year, however, conditions change.

Several woodpeckers regularly feed on ants. The American three-toed woodpecker, for example, feeds heavily on the big carpenter ants so common in mountain forests. Downy woodpeckers eat the much smaller field ants, particularly those that tend aphids like livestock.

This time of year pavement ants emerge from their winter seclusion and begin massing in cracks of sidewalks and driveways. Northern flickers feed on pavement ants, which puts them on the ground where they side-hop in circles as they work to extract the pavement ants.

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A flicker's side-hop circling is nothing if not a direct invitation for corgi intervention.

When not on the ground gathering ants, flickers spend a lot of time on roofs where they pound on chimney caps. The drumming that drives some people crazy is a woodpecker's territorial assertion. It fences its territory not with wire but with a perimeter of sound.

After I listened to the corgi's oofing for an hour, I got up to investigate. I found him in the living room where he sat rigid as the Sphinx and staring at the fireplace. I checked for a mouse, squirrel or bird that might have come down the chimney but found nothing.

Heading back to my office, I heard the corgi oof more exuberantly. In the living room once more I found nothing. We played this back and forth game several times before I finally caught on.

A flicker was drumming on our chimney cap, and the chimney acted like a megaphone delivering the magnified sound right into the living room. The flicker drumming animated the corgi, but the corgi couldn't figure out what to do about it. He was an emotional wreck.

So I took him outside. Holding him so he could see the house roof, I tried to get him to see the flicker sitting confidently atop the chimney cap. The corgi ignored the bird until he heard it drumming. Then he went Tasmanian devil on me.

He jumped from my arms and ran to the side yard where he barked up at the roof. He ran around to the backyard and barked, back to the front yard, barking the whole way. Front yard, side yard, back yard, side yard, front yard looking for a roof-access ramp he never found.

Frantic with excitement, he ran back in the house where he barked at the fireplace and was rewarded with more megaphonic drumming.

The flicker left, the drumming stopped, yet the corgi kept guard. For hours. Even parts of the next few days.

Which is why I now appreciate the value of flickers as corgi sitters.

Kevin J. Cook is a freelance writer and naturalist based in Loveland. His Wildlife Window column appears in the Reporter-Herald every Thursday.